


Only the Light

by Idris



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27964187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idris/pseuds/Idris
Summary: Because sometimes not everything is lost.Lambert's beginning couldn't have been much worse, but out on the Path he finds what might just be a happy ending.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 48





	Only the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Rated as usual for Lambert's mouth

Lambert’s never so much as set foot in this village before, so why’s it feel so goddamn familiar it makes every nerve in his body shake? 

Just some farming village with a dozen houses and a merchant and a blacksmith and a million fucking chickens. Been through a thousand just like it, but it’s not that kind of familiarity. 

Feels like some kind of old memory, so clouded only the light can still reach through, but he was born hundreds of miles from here (feels like he was born a thousand years before the first stones of this village were laid, out of time and place and all memory).

He’s almost disappointed to see a contract for some drowners up on the board. Was hoping to just ride on through, keep going until he found some place that didn’t set every particle of him on edge. 

The people here are almost… friendly. To him. The fucking mutant. The herbalist had smiled at him. Half the villages in Velen would stone him out the boundaries on principle. Lambert can almost respect the vicious little fuckers for it. Takes some serious balls to charge a Witcher. That’s normal, that kind of attitude is, even if most don’t have the nerve to pick up a rock. People spitting at him in the street and muttering crap at him. Not supposed to smile and wish him a good day. 

Lambert’s not quite paranoid enough to suspect a curse, but he still mops up the drowners quickly and comes back to the ealdorman within the hour. Best to get gone. If nothing else, before Lambert can open his big mouth and offend the one village in these mountains that seems to like Witchers for some fucking reason. 

He’s on his way back to his horse when he sees her. 

She’s drawing water at the well, and Melitele she’s beautiful, limned in the fading sun. Radiant as his every memory, and oh, he would do anything right now just to talk to her. Should just keep walking, ride down into the valleys and forget every reason, but fuck. His Path is hard enough as it is. Can he not just have this?

Not to speak to her, not to disturb her, just to see his mother on this one final, golden evening. 

He’d thought her dead, all these years. Had gone back to that shit hole house his second year on the Path, found nothing but burnt out ruins and unmarked graves. Had cursed on his knees, cursed every god and spirit, every force in the world, knuckles pressed to his mouth. Told himself that Witchers couldn’t cry, and almost believed it. 

And… and she’s here. Looking brighter than she’s ever done before, laughing at some joke with another woman. She looks strong, strong and radiant and so, so alive. Lambert has never felt blessed in his life, but oh, he would give up every miracle for this one. 

Just give him this. Let him have these few minutes. He sits on one of the low stone walls, the sun at his back, and watches. Stores up every laugh and gesture and word. Doesn’t even really listen to what she’s saying. The sound of her voice is enough, just that. 

Shit. She’s walking his way. Lambert’s not prepared to risk being recognised, never mind that he’s twenty years older and a man grown now. He hops down off the wall and starts the walk to his horse, putting his back to her, just slow enough to be casual. 

His mother’s had a hard enough life. Let her have what she has now, a life and laughter in this village where people smile at strangers and sing snatches of song to one another. Best all around if she thinks her boy didn’t survive the Trials. She doesn’t need the fucking grief of it all, having her son come back a yellow-eyed mutant, when she’s built something new for herself.

Lambert wasn’t an only child. His younger brothers and sisters must still live, surely. They can be her support now. She doesn’t need him. No one does. Free as a fucking bird, he is, in a cold and vast sky with barely a sign to guide him. 

He’s at the last house, his horse tethered a stone’s throw away, when a man stops him. Of course, because Gods forbid Lambert should have a moment of peace. 

Gritting his teeth, Lambert levels him an impassive stare. “Sorry, got business elsewhere. Need to be long gone already.”

The man only hesitates a moment. “Apologies. I just- I have to ask, for my mother’s sake. You see, I had an older brother once. One of your guild took him years ago, as payment for a debt, and she’s never stopped grieving over him since. Do you know- have you ever met a Witcher named Lambert?”

Fuck. Fuck. This is- it’s his brother. Nathaniel. The snot-nosed kid who’d tugged at his sleeve. He’d taught him to skip stones and put worms in his shoes and once punched the butcher’s boy for making him cry.

Keeping his face impassive, Lambert lets himself have just this moment, absorbs every detail of Nathaniel’s face. 

“Hmm. No. Can’t say I have. Sorry, probably died in the Trials.”

And he turns to go. Tells himself his Path will be different now for this knowledge, somehow, as if a moment in time can reshape a life already delineated, recarve the river’s agelong course. 

Nathaniel grabs his arm, firmly. So firmly that Lambert would have to hurt him to shake it. His little brother’s a head taller than him now, and isn’t that a strange, strange thing? Lambert almost doubts his memories, now. Feels like some kind of magic at work, but it’s only the most ancient, mundane kind of time travel, the slow painful progression of the future to the present to the past. 

“It is you,” Nathaniel whispers disbelievingly. “Your eyes are changed, but the rest of you- Gods, Lambert, why didn’t you say anything? You would have just walked right out this village, wouldn’t you? Right out.”

Lambert looks away first. “You don’t need someone like me in your lives.”

“What does that mean?”

“Look, this is a nice village, alright? You’ve got a house and, I don’t know, kids and a wife and whatnot. She- I saw her down at the well. Our mother. First time I can ever remember seeing her look happy. And I’m- well, what I am. I guess. What they made me to be. You don’t need that.”

Nathaniel’s grip tightens on Lambert’s arm, giving him a half-shake. “Shut up, Lambert. I don’t give a- I don’t care that you’re a Witcher. You’re our brother. You’re you.”

“Rest of the village-”

“Wouldn’t be standing now, if it weren’t for the Witcher who passed through here the other year. Killed a giant. Worst thing we’d ever seen. We’d all be dead now if it weren’t for him. You won’t find a man, woman or child here that wouldn’t welcome you. Only thing that grieved us was, he didn’t know if you were living or dead. We couldn’t even tell him your School.”

Nathaniel pauses, continues with a little hesitance. “He was- stunned that anyone would ask after a boy taken to be a Witcher. Said no one ever wanted to know what happened to them. Preferred to think them dead, or good as. Mother- mother cried that night. That people would be like that. Would treat you like that.”

Shrugging, Lambert says awkwardly, “That’s… just people, I guess. We’re used to it.”

There’s genuine pain in Nathaniel’s eyes, and Lambert doesn’t know what to do with that realisation. If it was anyone else, anyone but his little brother he’d be angry, he thinks. Angry because he wants someone to see, and angry because it doesn’t change anything. What fucking good does it do, wanting? He wishes the mages had finished the job and taken all of their feelings away, and he could just be an impassive, emotionless monster killing machine who doesn’t give a shit. 

“Lambert. Come inside, have dinner with us, stay the night. Please. We won’t keep you here, I know you have things to do, but surely you can spare a night?”

“I- yeah. I guess I can.”

His mother had cried over him. He owes her that much, remembers how goddamn awful it was to think her dead all these years. And Nathaniel- maybe it’s selfish and stupid, but Lambert doesn’t want to let go of the sight of him just yet. Wants to be greedy and store it up in his heart, store it all up until he has no more empty spaces, even when he knows there isn’t anything in the world that could ever be enough for that. 

There’s the scuffle of feet at his back, and a tremulous, hopeful, agonisingly familiar voice at his back. 

“Nathaniel- Master Witcher, we’re sorry to trouble you, but-”

“It’s him,” Nathaniel bursts out before their mother can say anything else. “It’s Lambert.”

The bucket of water slips from his mother’s hand, spills out at her feet. The force of her hug almost knocks Lambert flying. She doesn’t say a word, makes only a rusty sobbing noise that sounds like something grating loose in her chest, and tightens her arms around his neck until he half-thinks he might choke. 

Lambert slowly, carefully returns the embrace. His heart is a hammer blow in his chest. Feels like it might break his ribs. Feels like he’s taken a dozen potions at once, every part of his body about to fly apart. 

In his memory his mother is a fragile, slight creature, so small under his father’s blows, curling even smaller to cover her face. He realises now with a kind of startled joy that she’s not far off his height. What else about her was unfairly diminished in his memory, crushed tighter and tighter under the inexorable pressure of his father? 

To his own startled amazement, Lambert finds himself smiling. Guess now he’s going to get the chance to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little ambivalent about this one. It's been sitting on my computer for a month now, and while I'm not completely happy with it I think it's time to release it into the wild. I may change the title later if I think of something I like more.
> 
> Written because Lambert's backstory is just the saddest, and I wanted something where he gets a happy reunion goddamnit.


End file.
